Get Cookin'
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| Get Cookin'

There's no doubt about it – cookery is cool. Turn on the TV at any time of the day and you'll find a slickly produced paean to the culinary arts. Open the latest lifestyle mag and you're as likely to see snaps of Jamie Oliver emerging from a gastro-pub as you are Paris Hilton from Selfridges.

Get Cookin' capitalizes on this trend by handing you a spoon and asking you to mix up a number of food-based mini-games. These require the mastery of a number of key skills, from whack-a-mole style button presses to a more rhythm action-like timed approach. These all match up to recognized kitchen tasks such as spreading pizza toppings or mixing cocktails.

Once each task is completed you receive a mark out of 100 and a brief message that leaves you in no doubt as to how you have done � Excellent, Good Job or Awful. Consecutive successes will up your chef rating and rake in the dough (that's the currency not the pizza variety).

Each of the mini-games plays very nicely indeed, and there can be significant variation even within the same task due to the range of difficulty levels on offer. These are revealed in advance so you can pick and choose the most efficient menu. Lesser dishes can be left for your staff to handle, leaving you to take on the meatier orders – including those of the odd restaurant critic. The number of small tasks and their minor variants is commendable, and they serve to prolong interest in the game.

Unfortunately, this wide range of tasks can't hide the inherently repetitive gameplay. Catching burger fillings in sequence is fun for the first five times, but it starts to drag from then on in. Of course, repetition is common in other noted restaurant-based games like Diner Dash 2 or Curry In A Hurry. But while each of these concentrates on a single rock solid game mechanic, none of Get Cookin's games are quite fun enough on their own to sustain prolonged play.

It has to be said that the appeal of Get Cookin' is drastically enhanced by its visuals – it all looks good enough to eat. Possessing a real cartoonish charm, everything is rendered in a satisfyingly chunky hand-drawn style. From the pause menu (designed as an actual menu) to the brilliantly clear and concise tutorial screens, it possesses a real air of quality and polish which few mobile titles can match.

And that's not all on the neat touch front. If you own one of the Sony Ericsson handsets with motion-sensing technology you'll be able to use physical gestures to control the action. Gimmicky? Sure. Neat? You betcha. It's yet another of the game's many decent ideas that combine to make it a worthwhile experience.

And that's Get Cookin' in a nutshell; a wide variety of fairly shallow but very moreish micro-tasks. Like gaming fast food, it stuffs you with dozens of tasty if insubstantial morsels. But forget the health warnings – the odd empty calory never hurt anyone, did it?

Get Cookin'

A collection of incredibly simple and brilliantly presented tasks. It won't fill you up, but it sure does look and taste good
Score
Jon Mundy
Jon Mundy
Jon is a consummate expert in adventure, action, and sports games. Which is just as well, as in real life he's timid, lazy, and unfit. It's amazing how these things even themselves out.